Since the mind is different entity than brain or both are identical is question of debate.

To my way of thinking, the brain is the physical matter: neurons, glial cells, peptides. The mind are those functions that arise out of the inter-connectedness of the brain: thinking, learning, recognizing. This is not a true dualist philosophy as it recognizes that without the brain there is no mind, but without the mind the brain has no purpose. They are tightly interconnected.

Smart behaviors emerged first in bodies without brains, though. I like to think that cognition is the emergence of ever more complex interactions between a given systems and its context, those interactions arriving at progressively more structured over progressively greater and, at the same time, finer scales. I'm skeptical that neural stuff has to be the sole anchor.

Right, but is neural matter the only stuff of sufficient complexity? I don't think we have a fair answer to that question, we have a scientific bias for looking in what seems like the most obvious place for cognition to live.

Daedmian, How will you differentiate between knowledge, awareness and cognition?

Cognition simply means related to human brain. Cognitive science involves how human brains work to deal with information. the study is about the attention and thought process and memory usage. Objects are represented in memory using mental models i.e. a representation of a particular object in brain.

Johann- Gotcha. I'm with you that matter is important. Mind can't be a separate substance.

Ramanath- I think those are philosophical/phenomenological terms applicable from specific subsets of measurement frames. For instance, you can call stuff "knowledge" when you constrain your frame to an organism that is agreed to be well-defined as distinct from its environment. This is a pretty easy frame to assume given that it colors our day to day phenomenological experience--we feel like separate individuals distinct from our environments. Such a separate organism should definitely have ownership of its cognitive stuff, which would include "knowledge." I think that labeling cognitive stuff "knowledge" is a lot more challenging when your frame widens a bit more to take into account the complex interactions (that Johann is talking about) that can extend a bit farther beyond the typically observed bounds of "mind" and "brain" in these representational/computational views also indicated in this thread. The complex interactions might be, for me, the best approximation I could find of what's called "awareness." As for "cognition," I think that's a quite broad class of phenomena that includes but is not limited to whatever might count as "knowledge" and "cognition."

Important to keep in mind through all of this is that cognitive science is biased by its self-reference. We are measuring devices trying to measure our own measurements of our experience. So, best of luck to all involved, but I expect tripping over ourselves is the biggest obstacle in trying to answer these questions.

To my thinking, "cognition" refers to the processes involved in the operation of a mind. So recognition (re-cognition) for instance is the running again of a process that was done before - as in the processes involved in identifying a familiar face. Also, when someone experiences a sense of deja vu from experiencing a confluence of thoughts that is similar to a previous train of thoughts, this can probably be viewed as a recognition of a repeated thought pattern.

A mind is just too awesome a phenomenon to be explained away by such a thing as a material brain. The notion that cognition must emerge from the operation of some kind of machine called a brain is compelling. However, must this machine be made of just matter? Matter is just one form of energy. Can this machine be a more general system of interacting forms of energy - perhaps including but not restricted to those forms of energy that we know how to detect? Perhaps we find it hard to believe that a mass of gelatinous grey matter can manifest a mind because the brain actually consists of more than just that mass.

Definitions of cognition are many because of the many areas covered by the concept (Robotics, AI, Philosophy, Psychology, ….). See http://www.vernon.eu/euCognition/definitions.htm

Now, if one tries to address the question by a system approach, you can find: “Cognition is the management of meaningful information for constraints satisfaction” .

Such definition applies to animals, humans and robots assuming we correctly identify the constraints (Animals: stay alive, … Humans: look for happiness, … Robots: avoid obstacle, …). And also consider that the constraints are intrinsic for living entities, but derived for artificial systems.

If you want to know more on these subjects, just have a look at book chapter :

"Computation on Information, Meaning and Representations. An Evolutionary Approach"

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Information-Computation-Philosophical-Understanding-Foundations/dp/toc/9814295477

http://crmenant.free.fr/2009BookChapter/C.Menant.211009.pdf

In my practice in the field of the applied mathematics the cognition is design of new notions. Here is included the relationships between different notions and go deeper and deeper in the theory nuances. Some of these notions appear as pictures and some of them as actions (functions). But this is the deductive and inductive logical thinking. Some time new solutions appear as feeling and emotions and joy (certitude).

Cognition is coherent to learning. It includes all intelectual abilities of mind. "Brain" is concerned with the anatomical and physiological aspects yet "mind" is realted to function. Cognition could be illustrated with respect to function. Mind intellects comprise attention encoding then storage in the process of "perception". and includes remodeling and decision making as "thinking". according to Aristotel's hylomorphism the former is the passive mind or the matter of mind and the later is the active mind or the form of mind. these are my oun speculations.

cognition refers to the phenomenon where your brain goes through certain processes to make sense of the environment, stimuli or world. simple processing doesn't add up here. you cognize or understand something, when you apply certain processes or steps to seek knowledge or information about target event, object or thought even. you really don't go through cognition process unless you make any kind of sense of the target. e.g. when you enter a program into a computer, it translates it into its language, in a code it can understand, then checks for errors using pre-programmed knowledge which comes from the operating system and specific computer language. even if you make mistake, it fairly understands the code and can point out the error, just because it could at least make some kinda sense. what if you give some random bullshit to it to process........... it will probably tell you unrecognized stuff..... i.e you gave me bullshit and i can't process it coz i don't understand it. so the cognition process is really taking in inputs, turning it into something your neurons would respond to, and then making sense out of it to do corresponding work.

for an object to be cognizable, it needs to have some link to your existing knowledge about the world. then your cognitive system can use ANALOGICAL MAPPING to build relations and make sense out of the object, there are many theories behind this exact sense making and they all are disputable. but still the underlying mechanism is pretty much established.

Excellent question. A lot is known about cognition. Cognition is what the mind does. Many specific mechanisms are known. The simplest answer: we cognize the world due to cognitive mental representations. We have the knowledge instinct that drives us to match cognitive representations to our experiences. When a match occurs we understand something. You can look into my publications is you are interested in details, in my books and papers I often combine mathematics, engineering, and cognitive science, e.g.

Perlovsky, L.I., Deming R.W., & Ilin, R. (2011). Emotional Cognitive Neural Algorithms with Engineering Applications. Dynamic Logic: from vague to crisp. Springer, Heidelberg, Germany.

Leonid@ What does it mean "due to cognitive mental representation". As often I argue that cognition is action of sense organs on objects is the perception and when mind attaches on these then we cognize =cognition.

Ramanath, Excellent point, I should have better clarify my thoughts: language ideas-representations (because they are acquired at young age) serve as guides for cognitive representations. In other words cognitive representations are developed from experience in correpondence with language.

Your idea is good if perceptual or cognitive representations already exist in mind. Than I agree with your description. But how do we learn them in the first place? This is what I suggest is guided by language.

The difference between perception and cognition I understand as similar processes at different levels in the mind hierarchy. At sensor levels perception 'creates' objects using (mostly inborn) perceptual features. At a higher level cognition occurs by forming contexts and situations from objects. At still higher levels more abstract cognitions are formed from what is already cognized.

Perception can proceed without language (to some extent) - animals perceive objects; still we do not know what is inborn and what is learned. Higher level cognition cannot proced without language, this is the reason animals do not cognize abstract concepts.

Does it make sense?

Leonid

Leonid@ I think that Memory is always by the mind, mind remembers, the man does not. Therefore, Without consciousness of the remembrance; there is no cognition, the definite knowledge of the memory i.e. the thing remembered. The permanent emotion always resides in the mind. The emotion is the impression, the fruits of acts, which remains clinging to the soul like smell, as of musk, or which cause the soul to live in a particular body. The thoughts whatever originate in the mind that is due to the permanent emotion.

“A being becomes perturbed even in the enjoyment of pleasure on seeing charming things or hearing melodious sounds. It means really he mentally memorizes, without being conscious of the fact the associations or friendships of past lives remaining permanently impressed on the mind. “

I think there are emotions related to knowledge, to the satisfaction or unsatisfaction of the desire to know. These are specific human emotions, they are related to every process of cognition and perception and to the beautiful and sublime. Conscousness should always be cosidered together with unconscious, otherwise the main point is lost. My interest is in modelling connections between them.